The Chicago Jazz Pageant makes its annual return this summer season with performances from Chicago jazz favorites and nationally famend performers. A Labor Day custom within the metropolis, the free pageant will run from Aug. 28 by Aug. 31 at Millennium Park and the Chicago Cultural Middle.
The town’s Division of Cultural Affairs and Particular Occasions places on the pageant every year alongside the Jazz Institute of Chicago, and that is the pageant’s 56th 12 months operating.
“Chicago’s jazz legacy runs deep – from Bronzeville basements to international levels,” mentioned Mayor Brandon Johnson mentioned in a press launch. “This pageant represents our metropolis’s enduring creativity, cultural excellence, and dedication to bringing folks collectively by the common language of music.”
Listed below are some musicians to sit up for:
Thursday, August 28
esperanza spalding: A masterly bassist, the singer-songwriter has gained 5 Grammys, and was the primary jazz performer to be named Finest New Artist in 2010. spalding was most lately nominated for her 2025 album “Milton + esperanza,” a collaboration with Brazilian artist Milton Nascimento. She’ll shut out the opening evening.
Henry Johnson: A Chicago-born jazz guitarist who started taking part in at 12 years previous turned a South Aspect icon again in 1969, with a popularity as a must-see native artist. Johnson has labored with many names together with Hank Crawford, Freddie Hubbard, Ramsey Lewis and Norman Simmons, and counts George Benson and Wes Montgomery as influences.
Friday, August 29
Monty Alexander: A Jamaican-American pianist who often excursions and performs at jazz festivals, Alexander’s music consists of countless melody-making and a broad vary of jazz and Jamaican musical expressions. He’s on greater than 75 recordings and cited because the fifth biggest jazz pianist ever in Hal Leonard’s “The Fifty Best Jazz Piano Gamers of All Time.”
Patricia Barber: Identified for her sultry vocals and fascinating songwriting, Barber blurs the road between poetry and jazz. She bought her begin within the Nineteen Eighties in Chicago, the place she performed 5 nights per week on the Gold Star Sardine Bar. She’s toured the world ever since.
Saturday, August 30
Gary Bartz & NTU Troop: Saxophonist Bartz dedicates his music to the furtherance of Black People’ musical heritage. Bartz fashioned his group the NTU Troop in 1969, with the phrase Ntu originating from the Bantu language. Bartz has mentioned Ntu “stands for an alliance of bop, free, rock and African music.” He makes use of the saxophone and his voice to precise the expertise of Black People in as we speak’s world.
Kermit Ruffins: Ruffins is a New Orleans American jazz trumpeter, singer and composer with influences like Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan. He has over fifteen albums and his music seems in exhibits and films, together with a rendition of “The Naked Requirements” for Disney’s 2016 remake of “The Jungle Ebook.”
Sunday, August 31
Eliades Ochoa: Born in Cuba, Ochoa is taken into account probably the most famend Cuban “soneros” of all time. He’s a part of Cuban music ensemble Buena Vista Social Membership. In 2010 he launched his Grammy-nominated album “Afrocubism.”
Ari Brown Quintet: From Chicago, Ari Brown is a saxophonist, flutist and pianist. He started his profession within the Sixties, performing soul, rock, blues, jazz and R&B all through the Midwest. He’s additionally an educator, instructing college students at Chicago Public Faculties, Columbia Faculty Chicago and the Chicago Conservatory of Music.
Different jazz musicians introduced within the lineup embody Chicago’s Ernest Dawkins, Sarah Marie Younger, Ava Logan, G. Thomas Allen, the Natalie Scharf Quintet that includes Paul Asaro and Silvia Manrique & Marcel Bonfim. Extra artists shall be introduced nearer to the pageant weekend.
